John D.
NortonMore in History of Science

Modern writers often endow Einstein with a 21st century prescience about physical theory that, it just so happens, is only now vindicated by the latest results of the same writers' research. There is a second side to Einstein. His outlook and methods were clearly rooted in 19th century physics and a sense in which his work fulfills the discoveries of the 19th century.

Galileo's refutation of the speed-distance law of fall in his Two
New Sciences is routinely dismissed as a moment of confused
argumentation. We urge that Galileo's argument correctly identified why
the speed-distance law is untenable, failing only in its very last
step. Using an ingenious combination of scaling and self-similarity
arguments, Galileo found correctly that bodies, falling from rest
according to this law, fall all distances in equal times. What he
failed to recognize in the last step is that this time is infinite, the
result of an exponential dependence of distance on time. Instead,
Galileo conflated it with the other motion that satisfies this 'equal
time' property, instantaneous motion.